Wandering Rock Hill boy, 2, reunited with his parents

A Rock Hill boy is now back in the hands of his parents after he escaped from the care of a babysitter Monday.

Around 10 a.m., city sanitation crews found the boy walking along South Jones Avenue in just a diaper, Rock Hill police spokesman Mark Bollinger said. Crews called police, who arrived moments later, canvassing the neighborhood for the boy’s parents.

After those efforts ended unsuccessfully, Bollinger said authorities decided to issue a reverse 9-1-1 call within a two-block radius of the boy’s location.

“We figured a child that age wasn’t going to wander too far off,” Bollinger said. “But we should have extended it just a little beyond that.”

Local news media quickly got word of the incident, Bollinger said, and one of the boy’s relatives in Columbia saw the photo posted online and called his family.

In the mean time, the S.C. Department of Social Services was called in and had custody of the child. A further investigation found his caregiver him to sleep for a mid-morning nap, thinking that he had awoken to play with other children.

“She didn’t think anything about it until the police showed up,” Bollinger said.

Bollinger says he doesn’t expect any charges to be filed in connection with the incident.